this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Wait. Why is Reddit losing so much money? (www.businessinsider.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Reddit kind of anticipates this critique in its investor docs, and argues that it didn't really start operating as a serious business until 2018 when it finally started "meaningful monetization efforts" — that is, trying to make money for real.

But that's still six years ago. What has Reddit been doing since then?

One big, obvious answer: It has been hiring a lot of engineers and spending a lot of money on their salaries...

...What am I missing? I asked Reddit comms for comment but they declined, citing the company's quiet period before the IPO.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And, interestingly, they lost $91 million last year. If the CEO had instead earned $100 million last year, the company have made a multi-million dollar profit (if only just). If it had been $10 million (still way overpaid for any single person, I'd argue), they'd be nearing the hundreds-of-millions-per-year profit scale.

I'll never understand companies paying their CEOs hundreds of millions while they're losing money hand over fist...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not quite. He's paid mostly in stock, not cash.

Still an absurd amount of cash for a single person in a single year. You can effectively own most people for $4,000,000 (40 years at $100k a year.)

This guy is making half a million every single day. Imagine buying someone else's life's work every week.

Or, optionally, he could buy a nice house every single day.

Ultimately, cash is a measure of what society owes you.

One person simply can not produce the amount of effort that should be required to earn that amount of debt from society.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

He's literally trying to build up and stock his doomsday bunker.